Day in the
Life of a Cardiothoracic Surgeon
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This is an aerial view of:
Lehigh Valley Hospital
The main hospital is located at the crossroads of I-78 and Cedar Crest Boulevard in Salisbury Township just outside of
Allentown, Pennsylvania.
I have visited hospitals all over the world and I am
proud to say that Lehigh Valley Hospital has the finest facilities and
best location of any hospital I have ever known.
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To the left is the lobby to the Pool Pavilion.
Named after Leonard P. Pool, the founder of Lehigh Valley
Hospital's Cedar Crest site.
Mr. Pool had a vision for our community --he wanted to ensure that
people in our community would have access to the best possible health
care.
Today, Lehigh Valley Hospital is recognized as one of the finest
hospitals in the country providing excellent clinical care as well as
education and research.
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To the right is the
Jaindl Family Pavilion
Named after Fred Jaindl and his family for their generous
contribution to the construction of this building.
The Jaindl Family Pavilion houses state of
the art intensive care units, including a burn unit, trauma
unit, pediatric and neonatal units, as well as adult medical
and surgical intensive care.
Also located in the Jaindl Family Pavilion
is our obstetrics units and nurseries.
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<--- Here's a view of the Jaindl Family Pavilion
from the south side, showing the entrance to the emergency room.
We are currently expanding our emergency room because
of the high demand for its emergency and trauma services. We
apologize for the inconvenience of the the construction, but when it is
all finished it will be a state-of-the-art facility.
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| Here's
a picture of former Governor Ridge making a dedication to
the Jaindl Family Pavilion. ---> |
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Another great addition to Lehigh Valley Hospital is the
John and Dorothy Morgan Cancer Center
The John and Dorothy Morgan Cancer Center provides the finest and
most up-to-date cancer treatment and care.
The Lehigh
Valley Heart and Lung Surgeons office on the Cedar Crest
Campus is located on the
fourth floor of the John and Dorothy Morgan Cancer Center, Suite
403. |
Our office
address at the Cedar Crest campus is:
1240 S. Cedar Crest Blvd.
Suite 403
Allentown, PA 18103
Phone: 610-402-6890
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We also have an office at the
Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg Campus: |
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To the right is the new clinical
tower at LVH-M.
It includes a brand new open
heart surgery intensive care unit.
It's truly magnificent.
Stay tuned as our Muhlenberg campus will continue to grow and look more
and more like our Cedar Crest campus. Our office address at the
Muhlenberg Campus is:
2545
Schoenersville Road
Fourth Floor
Bethlehem, PA
18017
Phone:
484-884-1011
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Multi-disciplinary tumor boards
(committees) meet weekly to discuss
how best to treat our patients. We review all of our cancer
patients in the presence of medical doctors, surgeons, oncologists,
radiologists, pathologists, researchers, social workers, and more.
It's truly an amazing effort and it has enhanced the lives of my lung
cancer patients and their families.
Well, so much for the physical plant.
This page is supposed to be "a day in the life" so how does
it usually begin?
On most days, I try to wake up around 5:30 AM. This usually
should give me enough time to complete my patient rounds in the hospital
before going to the operating room.
I don't seem to mind getting up so early, but I often don't get home
until 7 or 8 PM, so there isn't much time, if any, during the week to
see my family.
So, it's off to work. By 6:30 or so I'm in the Open Heart
Intensive Care Unit checking on my patients who I operated on the
day before and then I make rounds in the Transitional Open Heart
Unit and the other medical floors.
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Prior to going to the operating room, I'll review the patient's
cardiac catheterization films and/or x-rays, and then it's off to the
operating room:
This is OR Room 15 -->
Here I perform both heart and lung surgery.
(I discuss more about heart and
lung surgery on other pages, plus I
have provided you with links to other heart and lung sites)
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On any given day, I'll perform 1 to 2 open heart procedures and/or
2 to 3 lung operations. Remember: "cardiothoracic" surgery
involves operating on both heart and lungs, and sometimes esophagus and
other structures in the chest. Interestingly, most cardiothoracic
surgeons choose either heart or lung/chest surgery, but our surgeons have
maintained a combined practice of both "cardiac" and
"thoracic" surgery.
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As you can see, the operating room can be a hectic place with lots of
instruments and machinery, especially during complex open heart
procedures.
Some operations, such as removal of part of a lung, can take as
little as 1 to 2 hours to complete. On the other hand, many complex
open heart procedures can take as long as 4 to 8 hours. |
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I'm often asked how I can stand in one place for so many hours
without a break? Well, most of the time, as the surgeon, we are
concentrating so much on the procedure that we don't notice the
time. The other point is that we all trained for many years,
slowly building up to more and more complex procedures.
Even so, it is very difficult sometimes, especially if there are
emergencies and the patients are quite ill. In these cases, even
after many hours in the operating room, we sometimes have to stay by the
bedside for hours trying to stabilize the patient.
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After
the operation is completed, my open heart surgery patients
will recover in the Open Heart Unit (OHU) for the first
night. The OHU is one of the many fine intensive care
units at Lehigh Valley Hospital:
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Usually after only one night, the open heart surgery
patients can leave the intensive care unit and go to the Transitional
Open Heart Unit (TOHU). The patients will stay here for the
remainder of their hospitalization, usually only 3 or 4 days.
My lung surgery patients usually go directly to the
Transitional Open Heart Unit without requiring an intensive care
unit. Even though the care for heart and lung patients is
different, the staff in TOHU have a tremendous experience of caring for
both heart and lung patients.
Taking care of the patients after surgery is just as
important as doing a good job in the operating room:
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To the left are two IV (Intra-Venous) poles with stacks of
medication pumps. For very high risk patients, the doctors and
nurses may have to adjust a variety of medications at one time in order to
stabilize the patient. Today, we are lucky to live in a time when
the technology is there to save even the most ill of patients.
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Unfortunately, a good part of every day for all of us in
healthcare is paperwork!
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In addition to writing progress notes and orders in the
charts, we have to fill out data bank registries, flow charts,
instructions to patients, prescriptions, letters to referring doctors,
insurance forms, disability forms, and on and on. |
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Another part of my day is going to meetings. We
have a ton of meetings every week that we have to fit into an already busy
schedule:
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In any given week I may attend: Surgical Grand Rounds,
Cardiothoracic Surgery Mortality and Morbidity Conference, General Surgery
Mortality and Morbidity Conference, Lung Tumor Board, Lung Cancer Clinic, The Lehigh Valley
Heart and Lung Surgeons
Business Meetings, Research Meetings, Education Meetings, and Hospital
Administration Meetings. |
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Of course, it's not all work and no play. Several
times a year we have receptions to celebrate our work with our colleagues:
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At the end of the day, I usually go to my office and
read my mail. Often I have letters to dictate and patients to call
on the phone. Then, just prior to going home, I always take one last
walk through the open heart unit and transitional open heart unit to check
on my patients.
At night, my partners and I rotate on duty for answering
pages and emergencies. It's not often, but sometimes we're up all
night long with an emergency operation. If that should occur, I,
unfortunately, will need to cancel the next day's operations so I can get
some rest. No one likes to have their surgery postponed, but most
patients understand that emergencies do occur from time to time.
Guess what is the best part of my day? Going home
to my family. Many years ago when I left home for college, my father
wrote me a letter in which he said, "I guess, Ray, a guy needs a reason
to keep going and when things got a little heavy I would look at you and
knew I had my reason."
Well, when I'm working hard late at night, or when I'm
tired, or frustrated by all of the challenges of being a heart and lung
surgeon today, I look at my family and I know I have my reason
to keep going.
As Tom Hanks said playing Forrest Gump, "I may not
be a smart man, but I know what love is..."
Thank you for sharing this day at work with
me. I hope you enjoy the rest of my website!
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